Twenty :: Cambodia

‘Twenty’ is an occasional series to mark the first twenty years of my work as a professional photographer.

We were doing a story on malnutrition in children, and so were looking at food security in rural settings. The Tearfund partner was particularly working with micro-scale fish farming, which was quite fun to photograph, and may pop up in this series at some point, but a lot of the focus was on the rice harvest.

We stayed out in the village, in a first floor room, with slats in the floor, and a man with a machine gun casually sitting on the bottom step to keep us safe. Staying late and getting up early is so much better photographically, as you get all the good light, and this was one of my favourite experiences on any overseas trip.

When the rice was being harvested, the whole family join in – this girl’s concentration and effort were rather impressive.